UPPER MACUNGIE TWP., Pa.- An activist investor has succeeded in winning several seats on the board of directors at Air Products (APD).
A well-placed source confirmed to 69 News that three of Mantle Ridge’s four candidates were elected to the board at Thursday morning’s annual shareholder meeting.
Those candidates are Mantle Ridge founder Paul Hilal, as well as Andrew Evans, and Dennis Reilley.
A fourth candidate, Tracy McKibben, was not selected.
Mantle Ridge owns about $1.3 billion (or about 1.8%) in common shares of Air Products stock. It had waged a months-long campaign, calling for major changes at the industrial gas company, which is headquartered in Upper Macungie Township.
Mantle Ridge has also recommended that Air Products CEO Seifi Ghasemi be replaced. It has put forth Eduardo Menezes, a former top executive at Air Products’ rival Linde, as a candidate.
Air Products intensified its own pitch to shareholders in recent weeks, announcing a more-defined succession plan for Ghasemi, offering a sneak peek of its fiscal 2025 first quarter earnings, and increasing its quarterly dividend to $1.79 per share, marking the 43rd straight year of dividend increases.
The company also announced that, moving forward, it would separate the roles of board chairman and CEO, and that Ghasemi would retire from the board.
Even so, three major proxy advisory firms expressed support for Mantle Ridge’s efforts.
This marks the second time Hilal has been involved in a tug-of-war with Air Products. But last time, he was in Ghasemi’s corner.
Ghasemi joined the board of Air Products in 2013, as the company was under pressure from the investment firm Pershing Square Capital Management, where Hilal was then a senior partner. Ghasemi became CEO the following year. He took over for John McGlade, who was named the company’s sixth CEO in 2007.
Hilal founded Mantle Ridge in 2016, which has orchestrated shake-ups at several major corporations, including railroad CSX in 2017; food, facilities and uniform services provider Aramark in 2019; and discount retailer Dollar Tree in 2022. At each of those companies, he helped install a new CEO, and currently serves as the vice chairman of the board of directors for all three.
Air Products had argued, in one of its recent letters to shareholders, that those campaigns demonstrated Hilal’s track record of “value destruction and mismanaged succession”.
Air Products did not immediately respond to a request from 69 News to comment on the outcome of Thursday’s shareholders meeting.
Air Products is one of two Fortune 500 companies in the Lehigh Valley (PPL Electric Utilities is the other). Founded by Leonard Parker Pool in 1940 in Detroit, Michigan, the company moved to the Lehigh Valley in the 1940s. Its stock was listed on the New York Stock Exchange for the first time in 1962 as its sales passed $100 million.
Today APD has a market capitalization of more than $70 billion. Earlier on Thursday, APD’s shares were trading at $320.30, near the top of their 52-week range.